ACCENTEDiRL: “A Night of Poetry”
The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) is excited to announce its collaboration with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American (APA) Center to host ACCENTEDiRL: Dialogues in Diaspora.This Spring 2021, ACCENTEDiRL will feature authors, artists, poets, and cultural producers across the Southeast Asian diaspora in a series of four free virtual events broadcast on Facebook Live and YouTube. Hosted by Pulitzer-prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, this project blends DVAN’s ACCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora show with the Smithsonian APA Center’s Heritage iRL to engage with audiences from across the world in intimate, lively conversations about culture, heritage, and narrative.
The first episode, “A Night of Poetry,” takes place this Friday, February 19 at 7pm PST/ 10pm EST. The Facebook event is free to the public and can be accessed here. For more information, please visit https://dvan.org and https://smithsonianapa.org.
About the Guests:
A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Paris By Night 114: Tôi Là Người Việt Nam, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology. His poems and essays are widely published in numerous publications including Screaming Monkeys and Spoken Word Revolution Redux. He has two collections of poems, both published by Coffeehouse Press, Sông I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, the latter of which was nominated for the Minnesota Book Award and was chosen as 2017’s best poetry book of the year by San Francisco State’s Poetry Center.
Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split (Alice James Books), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Her work has been published in The New Republic, McSweeney’s, and Poetry. She has received awards from MacDowell, Djerassi, The Anderson Center, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Poets House, Poets & Writers, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, The Asian American Literary Review, The Center for Book Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency, the Jerome Foundation. She has taught at the 92nd Street Y, New York University, Fordham University, Sierra Nevada College, and the Polytechnic University at NYU. She was Sierra Nevada College’s Distinguished Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence. She serves as Executive Director at Kundiman and lives in NYC.
Poet and multimedia artist Diana Khoi Nguyen was born and raised in California. She earned a BA in English and Communication Studies from UCLA, an MFA from Columbia University, and a PhD from the University of Denver. She is the author of the chaplet Unless (Belladonna*, 2019) and debut poetry collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn Publishing, 2018), selected for the Omnidawn Open Contest and a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize. It received the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and Colorado Book Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in magazines and journals such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, and PEN America. A Kundiman fellow, Nguyen’s other honors include awards from the 92Y “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Contest, Key West Literary Seminars, and Academy of American Poets. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Paul Tran is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. Their work appears in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Good Morning America, NYLON, and elsewhere, including the RZA-directed movie Love Beats Rhymes (Lionsgate) alongside Azealia Banks, Common, and Jill Scott. Since 2013, Paul has coached the poetry slam teams at Brown University, Barnard College & Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Paul was the first Asian American since 1993—and first transgender poet ever—to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam, placing top 10 at the Individual World Poetry Slam and top 2 at the National Poetry Slam. For their writing and teaching, Paul has received scholarships, residencies, and fellowships from Kundiman, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Poets House, Lambda Literary Foundation, Napa Valley Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network/Djerrasi Artist Residency, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and many more. Paul is Poetry Editor at The Offing Magazine.
Special appearance:
Thuy Phan is the creator of mixaphoria, a virtual bookbar that curates and designs cocktail pairings for books by diverse writers. mixaphoria’s mission is to encourage readers to engage with diverse literature and spark thoughtful discussions. Thuy’s recipes and book reviews for each pairing can be found at mixaphoria.com or on Instagram @mixaphoria. Thuy is also a dancer and lives in MA.
Check out Thuy’s special curated cocktail for this night, the Firecracker!
About the Host:
Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of The Sympathizer, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, The Refugees, and Race and Resistance: Literature, Politics and Asian America. His most recent book was Chicken of the Sea, written with his son Ellison. His next book is The Committed, the sequel to The Sympathizer.
About the Moderator:
Philip Nguyen is the producer of ÁCCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora presented by the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). He teaches Asian American Studies in the
College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and is the Community
Organizing Manager for the Vietnamese American Roundtable, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization based in San Jose, California. Philip serves as the President of the Union of
North American Vietnamese Student Associations (UNAVSA) and as the Co-Chair of the
Young Vietnamese Americans (YVA) Committee for PIVOT – The Progressive Vietnamese
American Organization.